23 (!) years ago Linus Torvalds wrote a message to the comp.os.minix newsgroup (does anyone remember newsgroups?) in which he announced that he was doing a free operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)LOL and he liked to know what features most people would want.

He failed in predicting the future though:

It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(

Well done, Linus, and Happy Birthday, Linux! Live long and prosper, both!